“Good Scout Group and MDigital Life came together with a shared belief that data compels your smarter story. Whether it is the ammunition to convince a company you are a right-fit partner or the analytics to craft actionable marketing and media strategies, knowing more can be the differentiator that ignites success. In the spirit of knowing more and doing more with that knowledge, we collectively set out to profile the unique attributes of the cancer center constituent. Decoding The Cancer Center Constituent outlines specific brand preferences, lifestyles and key interests of individuals that currently follow the top 50 Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the U.S.” Using MDigitalLife, W2O Group and Good Scout Group conducted a psychosocial profiling study to identify specific behaviors, affinities and conversations of U.S.-based cancer center constituents. The sample set included 10,000 handles following at least one of the top 50 cancer centers.

Matthews explained the need for cancer centers to know their audience, “As healthcare has changed we have seen a real need to understand who our audiences are online.” More important than just knowing who your audience is, knowing what they say and who they follow is crucial. “If you consider who you are following on twitter it actually says a lot about what you like – who you are. By looking at the followers of an organization we can understand what they are about. In this report we looked at the twitter followers for all of the comprehensive cancer centers in the United States and we looked at how the accounts that those folks followed compared to a normative data set. It gave us a sense of how the audiences of the cancer centers are different than the audiences of other organizations.”

Good Scout President, Maureen Carlson shared some key insights from the report with the audience at Pre-Commerce. Based on the cancer center constituents research, 61% of cancer center followers are female, the overall audience tends to be predominantly white/non-hispanic and over 75% are ages 18-45. Top brand affinities included Walgreens, Microsoft & Nordstroms. Carlson explained: “We learned that there is a highly engaged user base, that is very interested and connected to healthcare. Many are engaged users but they are not acting, not donating to these cancer centers. If you look at the top 3 consumer brands you see Walgreens, Microsoft & Nordstroms. We need to know this information in order to align our messages with the brands our constituents are following. We should be looking at this data to cross reference with these brands to understand how we are doing.”

Finally, Dede Stefano, Executive Director of Corporate Alliances at MD Anderson explained the challenges her organization faces, “Our challenge is 2 fold: federal funding for cancer research is flat at best. We also are about to have a crisis because cancer is a disease of the elderly… The good news is people are living longer but that is also the bad news. The population is quickly aging.”

.@ddestafano of MD Anderson shares that in 14 yrs 20% of the US population will be over 65. Let’s use data to engage those consumers #SXW2O

Stefano and her organization see value in the information uncovered in the report, “Reports like this are very important because it gives the ability to target our corporate partners by brand affinity and we want to make sure that our audience is aligned. This report gives us a strategic and tactical way to do that. It gives us the ability to educate our consumers and our brands. We need to use every tool in our arsenal to make these smart decisions. We cannot afford to ignore the data.”